


your humble offering

by namelessdeer



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: (but not in the sexy way), (the anxiety attack is byleth's), (they're not having the best time), Angst, Anxiety Attacks, Autistic Byleth, Choking, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Forehead Kisses, Gender-Neutral My Unit | Byleth, Hurt/Comfort, Nonbinary My Unit | Byleth, Other, PTSD, Pining, Post-Timeskip, Suicidal Thoughts, byleth doesnt know that theyre pining but they are, dimitri and byleth both show up at the monastery a week before the millennium festival, instead of right before, mild Self-harm, slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 03:46:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20575934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/namelessdeer/pseuds/namelessdeer
Summary: Byleth has never known what love is, has never given much thought to it at all, but they think maybe this is it: the desire to cradle hurt in the nest of their ribcage like it's the most precious thing they have, because to let go of it would be far, far worse.(Byleth and Dimitri, a week alone in the ruins of Garreg Mach.)





	1. i

**Author's Note:**

> _"Here is your humble offering, / obliterated and broken in the mouth / of this abandoned church."_ \- Caitlyn Siehl, 'Start Here'

The moon is high in the sky now, although little light filters in through the dust- and grime-coated stained glass of the windows. In the incomplete darkness Dimitri is nothing more than a hunched shape, the misleading bulk of his cloak cutting him an imposing figure.

_You need to sleep,_ Byleth thinks to say, but they do not. They, after all, are not sleeping either. And they are not his professor anymore - have not been, it seems, for five years. Byleth doesn't know yet, where to redraw the lines between them. Not after the way he teeters on the brink between the worlds of the living and the dead, when he looks at their face. Not after the way he snarled like a dog earlier, when Byleth noticed his limp and reached out to steady him.

(Not after the way they abandoned him to this fate.)

So, instead, what Byleth says as they steal up to the rubble in the cathedral beside him is, "It's late."

He twitches at the sound of their voice, instinctual and animal, and in the place where Byleth's heart should beat, something aches. The hand that itches to reach toward him stills instinctually, as well.

_He never did have the best sleeping habits,_ Byleth remembers. Nights spent furtively poring over books in the library; times Byleth woke when the sun had barely risen, a holdover from mercenary days, and found him at the training grounds, sweat-damped and focused in the early fog, as though he hadn't slept at all.

They should have noticed. They should have noticed so much sooner, just how heavy the burden was that he carried.

"The dead do not rest," he replies at last. His voice is low and hoarse, as though he's been screaming.

(No - as though he hasn't had reason to use it in months.)

It is too dark to see his expression, and Byleth is chilled by a disquieting sense of dread as they realize that they do not know whether he is referring to the spectres that haunt him, or to himself.

The moments spin out, heavy with silence.

_But you do,_ they think. _You must._

They do not beg.


	2. ii

The following day Byleth explores the monastery, partly to reacquaint themself with it after five years of looting and the elements have done their work on it, partly to search for things that they and Dimitri will need. They walk slowly, trailing the damp, mossy stonework with their fingertips as they go. The monastery has always been a holy place, but the deep, reticent hush of it now is something else entirely, compelling them to quiet their steps, to tread as carefully and respectfully as if this were an enemy fortress, or the throne of God.

(A throne they have sat upon. It did not feel near so unwelcoming - their presence did not feel near so much an intrusion - as this.)

Five years. Five years in a blink. And now they are afraid to sleep, because what if it steals them from the world again?

Oddly enough, it's not until their feet lead them into the greenhouse that they begin to feel reoriented in this place. In five years the plants have grown wild and untended, but they have _grown_, spilling from boxes and reaching in tangles and snarls out of their neat rows and toward the sky. All of the green gentles the light, makes the air quiver with life. It reminds Byleth that they're alive, too, even if their heart doesn't beat. Even if they died five years and a day ago.

Suddenly the stubborn strength that has animated them for the past twenty-four hours evaporates and they slump down on their knees, pulling their oversized and miraculously unharmed coat close around them with a shuddering breath (_because that bothers them too, because the lack of decay means they couldn't truly have just lain there under the rubble those five years, and if not there then where were they, had they died after all?)_ -

Because they fully _believed_ they were going to die when they tumbled from that cliff only a day ago, and though they wouldn't admit it to anyone, balk from admitting it even to themself as they shiver there on the greenhouse floor, but their last conscious thought hadn't been _Rhea needs me_ or _my students need me_ or even _I don't want to die_, it was _Dimitri-_

They unfold their long legs and waver to their feet to get moving, because processing their feelings has never been a strong suit.

*

"You have to eat," they do say this time, both because the indirect route did not work previously and because they don't feel like a hypocrite, given they are clutching a second plate of food to their chest.

Five years ago they would not have described Dimitri as _lean_. Now, they would.

It seems to take a long time for him to parse their words, but when he finally does he half-turns toward them with a sneered, "I don't need it." He has been crouched staring stonily out a window ever since a drizzle started up a few hours earlier, as if that will make the rain stop any faster.

(As if it is the _rain_ that is preventing him from going out and hunting more Imperial rats, and not the injury to his leg.)

A knot of irritation rises in their chest to see him sulking like a child, butting heads with Byleth just because he _can_, but it vanishes like a snuffed candle when they see the way his single eye flicks restlessly to scan the halls behind Byleth and the entrance points in the rain outside, the way his hands twitch over the shaft of his lance where it's balanced idly over his legs. He seems - _agitated_, for a reason Byleth can't comprehend and they doubt he'd explain.

_Nevertheless,_ they do not say, but they leave the plate of food on the floor within his reach, and retreat to eat their own scavenged plate of food somewhere they won't bother him.

(Hours later they come back to collect the plate and find that only a scattering of crumbs remains of the food. They dearly hope that this is because he changed his mind and not because he scraped it onto the ground somewhere. Byleth would not, any longer, be entirely surprised.)


	3. iii

Waking him up is a mistake. Byleth knows that even as they reach out, even before their fingertips brush his cloak. It's just - they were helpless to stop themself.

Both of them have been sleeping in stolen moments, often-unintentional snatches of time, curled in corners, up against pillars, stretched beneath windows. Tonight is no different. Byleth is too restless to sleep, and so they drift through the hallways of the monastery like the ghost Dimitri thought them to be.

When they first hear the scrape of something foreign against stone, they tense up, at first thinking that the imperial soldiers may have caught up at last. But then they hear it - a whimper, so soft it could almost be missed were they not straining to hear, were the room not drenched in silence.

Dimitri is slumped against the wall, still in full armor, as though he simply fell there and lacked the energy to get back up. Moonlight cuts through a high window, falling half across his face, throwing his features into sharp relief.

He looks so... young.

He looks so _vulnerable_.

This is a Dimitri Byleth can almost recognize, a Dimitri Byleth almost thinks they know. His limbs boneless, rather than wound tight with the constant tension that characterizes his waking hours. His face smoothed of the harsh lines wrought by suffering and fury. Except - that's not true, not quite. Even as Byleth watches his brows pinch together as if he's in pain. He shifts in his sleep with another soft cry - his head jerks to the side and his fingers spasm - Byleth's breath is already catching and then his pale, tousled hair falls out of his face to reveal tears gathering at the corner of his eye, and his lips part to breathe out _"Please"_ -

Byleth is by his side in an instant, quick as an arrow loosed by a bow, desperate and unthinking in their need to lessen his pain, even a little.

In the next instant they are on their back, all the breath knocked from their lungs and their head ringing from impact with the unforgiving stone.

Dimitri sways above them, single eye wild and glazed, face a rictus of panic or anger. They can't tell the difference. Maybe there isn't a difference. Byleth opens their mouth to say _it's okay, it's only me_ but finds they can't, Dimitri's hands pressed squarely on their neck, grip tightening by the moment.

They choke - fighting to stutter out anything, _Dimitri, Dima_ \- but he has always been stronger than them in terms of pure physical strength, stronger than anyone they know. A high keen builds in their throat as they feel their windpipe close, feel the hands close ever tighter with crushing force. There is no recognition in his eye; even now he bares his teeth in a snarl, his grip iron, throttling them for all the world like it's his life or theirs.

If he bears down even a little harder, he's going to break their neck.

Byleth has seen him do it before. Snap a soldier's neck like a twig, the same power that snapped Mercedes's scissors carried through to a horrifying logical conclusion.

For the very first time since they stumbled upon him in the cathedral, blood-spattered and crouched in the darkness like an animal, Byleth is afraid of him.

Then the tear in his eye slips free, rolling down his cheek and joined quickly by several more.

They can't breathe. They can't breathe, and Dimitri is beautiful in the half-light, his pale hair a curtain, looking less a remote and vengeful god than an angel with a broken halo.

They can't breathe, and their vision is swimming, and the pain screams at their pulse point like a baying hound, and all they want is for him to _stop looking so sad_.

Like moving underwater they lift a trembling hand and brush the tears from his cheek, fingers lingering in the soft hair at the nape of his neck.

"-mitri..." A pitiful croak that takes all the remaining air from their lungs.

It takes Byleth entirely too long to notice that the weight is gone. He's flung himself back as though burned, blue eye filling up with recognition like rainwater in a pond. Byleth wants to get up, to tell him it's okay, but their limbs are as unresponsive as a puppet's with its strings cut, and their first attempt at a breath is a sputtering, choking wheeze that does nothing but lodge in their throat like a spear. His lips work soundlessly; his hands shake; stormclouds of devastation roil across his face and panic twines through Byleth because his grip is gone but the bruising pressure remains and they still can't breathe, they still can't breathe, they _still can't breathe_ -

For the first time since waking up in the future, the power of Divine Pulse courses through them like a lightning bolt.


	4. iv

Sometimes Dimitri knows Byleth isn't a ghost. Sometimes he forgets.

It's not uncommon to find him pacing and growling under his breath, gesturing and speaking to someone who isn't there. Byleth hasn't gotten close enough to hear what he's saying very often, but they think mostly it's apologies. Apologies, and snarled promises.

It's still better than the empty look in his eye for the stretches of time where he shuts down entirely. The times where they pass each other by like they're strangers, or two ships circling the same dead sea.

But this afternoon, the afternoon of the fourth day, it's both.

They find him in the cathedral, backed up against the rubble in a way that can't be comfortable. His injured leg is splayed to the side, the other hiked up near his chin, the lance in front of him, like a barrier. He is muttering to himself feverishly, and at first they think he's cradling his head in his hands, but as they draw nearer they realize with a flash of alarm that he's carding his fingers through the pale, limp strands and tugging, over and over again.

"Dimitri," they say.

There's no response. His one blue eye is dull and unseeing.

_"Dimitri."_

No indication he's heard, except that he gives his hair a particularly savage yank and rocks forward a bit, volume rising as he bites out a scratchy, "I'm sorry, I'm _sorry_," and they can't even be certain it was a reaction to what they said.

Byleth _aches_.

They can't leave him, now that they've found him like this. It cuts them to the marrow to see what the cruel work of five years has wrought on him, yet it seems the simplest thing in the world, that they should have no option but to seek him out and fall at his feet. He does not want them here. They are utterly lost as to how they can help. And yet.

It hurts to look at him, but it hurts more not to. And Byleth has never known what love is, has never given much thought to it at all, but they think maybe this is it. The desire to cradle hurt in the nest of their ribcage like it's the most precious thing they have, because to let go of it would be far, far worse.

"I'm trying," he says, "I'm _trying_," and it's a pitiful, strangled sound even as his face skews into an ugly mask of rage, and it takes all the power of the Goddess imbued in them to stop them from going forward and gathering him up in their arms.

They remember his hands around their neck. The creaking of cartilage and the burn in their lungs like someone had set them on fire.

(Remember the way his hands trembled, after. The involuntary tears that rolled down his cheek, the first ones they had ever seen him shed.)

They are drifting forward before they have registered the decision. Slowly, slowly, deliberate and implacable as the sea. Even as they move into his space he gives no sign he knows they are there.

Shaking with daring, heart in a vicegrip, Byleth leans down and brushes their lips against his forehead. Soft and dry and barely a touch, yet his entire body stills at the contact. Byleth, too, freezes, mouth still a millimetre away from his skin, worried they've made a massive mistake.

Then he huffs out a sound, low and desolate, that could not even charitably be called a laugh. In the close air between them Byleth _feels_ it as much as they hear it.

"I didn't think," Dimitri says, "that your ghost would be this cruel."

Byleth draws back. He's looking at them now, a sardonic tilt to his mouth, his one eye as wavering and barren as the horizon on a salt flat.

"But I understand, Professor," he goes on. "I know why you're mocking me. I know you can't rest. And I promise, I _promise_ I'll bring you her head." The last words come out guttural, snarled.

It's the most he's said to them at one time in all four days. Then he makes to get up, a lumbering movement like that of a great wounded beast, and something snaps in Byleth that they don't understand.

In the space of that instant, they turn on their heel and flee.


	5. v

It happens again.

Or - not _again_. The first time is tucked away in the vault of Byleth's memory and Byleth's alone, same as the time an axe cleaved Annette's stomach like butter, same as the time a Demonic Beast tore Sylvain's head from his shoulders.

This time is simpler.

Dimitri has not sought Byleth out on his own since they reunited with each other, not once. When he is lucid enough to know who they are, and that they are not merely haunting him, he is tetchy and taciturn. They have gotten into the habit of telegraphing their movements when they approach him, especially since the incident that led to Byleth using Divine Pulse. That does not substantially help this time, however.

After spending most of the day - not _hiding_, they refuse to think of it as hiding - in the greenhouse, tending the plants and putting things in order just to have something to _do_, the magnetic pull of their worry grows too strong and they go to find him.

He is pacing again. Still with that limp, the limp he refuses to let Byleth cast Heal on for no reason whatsoever, or at least no reason that he is willing to share with them. He is not talking to himself this time, but his armor is half-discarded and he's clutching one arm as he walks. At first they think he must've gone out to fight; that someone must have hurt him without their knowledge (yet again, yet again); but then they realize that the blood dripping down his arm comes from no source other than his own fingernails digging so deeply into the flesh of his upper forearm that the skin has burst. This is so alarming they abandon all caution and lunge toward him, shouting out _"Dimitri-"_

\- and he whirls, all raw instinct and brute strength, and they only have time to think _Oh, fuck_ before a white burst of pain explodes through their chest and ricochets up their back and through their skull.

_A wall,_ they register. They've been smacked into a wall. Like a fly. Their ears are ringing. Like a particularly annoying fly, that's what they amounted to, taking a direct blow completely unguarded against Dimitri's Crest-enhanced strength.

They drag a breath in. It whistles. Their entire right side erupts in pain, like they've taken a flurry of stab wounds, and that's how they find out they have several broken ribs.

"I - "

A voice. Color and sensation are starting to rush back into the world, and so, with difficulty, they look at him.

His expression is hard to parse, but then, all expressions are, when Byleth isn't concentrating. His one eye is very wide, the pupil tiny and drowning in washed-out blue. One arm is half-outstretched toward them, a detail which Byleth hyperfocuses on. It's his injured arm. The crescent-moon gashes he dug into it have bled profusely, but don't actually look very deep, so that's good.

"I - " he starts again. "I didn't - I thought you - " They watch his eye flicker, darting from Byleth's face to the ground to his bloodied arm and back to their face. His chest heaves up and down. He appears to wither before their eyes, shrinking into himself like a kicked dog, and then he seems to lose all capacity to deal with the situation for, much as Byleth did the day before, he clamps his jaw shut, whirls on his heel, and flees.

Byleth focuses on breathing very shallowly until they can remember how to use white magic. When the buzzing rush tingles through them they let it knit together the bones, soothe the knot on the back of their head, but leave the scattershot purple of the bruises untouched.

Violence is ungainly on him, awkward, they think, yet it clings to him now like a second skin.


	6. vi

Byleth has been trying very hard not to think. But Dimitri is gone, vanished from the monastery grounds or else hiding very, very well. It leaves little else for them to do.

For the first time Byleth returns to their old quarters. Some primal foreboding has kept them from doing so until now, as if seeing how it has changed will force them to understand that they can never go home. But when they ease open the door it is less changed than they expected. The papers on the billboard are yellowed and peeling, impossible to read. The air is musty and stale, the sheets are moth-bitten, and two of the walls have started to rot. Other than that there is not a thing out of place. Only the thick layer of dust settled over everything denotes the passage of time.

Byleth sits down on their old bed with a _thwump_, grips their bad side when it twinges, and thinks.

People make a lot of assumptions about their emotional topography. In truth, Byleth has always had emotions, but those emotions have always been largely opaque even to themself; indistinct shapes moving through their inner landscape, mostly impossible to grasp except in the rare case where they have somehow bubbled out.

Around Dimitri, it's different.

It's always been different, or at least has been different for long enough that they can't remember when the difference started. Around Dimitri, everything is magnified; their emotions become so large as to be impossible to ignore. That's not so much to say that Byleth _understands_ those emotions as it is that they're forced to grapple with them.

The understanding comes later. The understanding percolates in their mind until it finally turns into something expressible to themself.

Here is what Byleth is thinking: when Dimitri said, in the Goddess Tower, that maybe he should be wishing that they would be together forever, it is possible he was not joking. It is possible that Byleth had hoped he was not joking.

Here is what Byleth is thinking: with Jeralt dead, Garreg Mach - the only place where they ever felt they truly belonged - is their only home. The Blue Lions, scattered to the four corners of the earth - save Dimitri, who is scattered still further than that - are their only family.

Here is what Byleth is thinking: they have never truly been afraid until now.

_What if I can't fix this? What if I never see my students again? What if Dimitri never smiles again? What if Sothis' power amounts to nothing where it counts? What if-? What if-? What if-?_

They stumble to their feet and run blind through the monastery. Their bruised ribs protest, the only thing reminding them that they're still in their body. They stretch out their hand and reach for Divine Pulse over and over again, straining and stretching and reaching and begging the hands of time to turn back, back, back and take them back to the start. Seconds and minutes and hours spin beyond their fingertips, all inviting Byleth to pluck and choose, but none are even close to what Byleth is looking for. A day, two days, three - and then the threads of time thin and fray and the possible pasts shatter in their hands like spun glass.

_Five years. Five years. Five years gone._

*

When Byleth comes back to themself they are in the cathedral, knees drawn up in front of them and their back to a wall. Hours have passed. They may have slept. Byleth doesn't know; it's all a blur after the flight from their quarters, but none of that seems very important right now.

What is important is that it's very cold in the cathedral this time of day - night? - but Byleth is not cold, because a vast blue cloak has been settled around their shoulders, their face pressed into the wide ruff of fur. Dimitri is nowhere to be seen, but the cloak is draped warm and heavy and comforting over Byleth, engulfing them completely. They let out a long, shuddering breath because _he came back_.

The cloak smells of sweat, and blood, and death. It smells of Dimitri.

They burrow their face further into it, clutch it closer around their shoulders. 

It is soft, and sure, and real, and there in the cathedral with their back to the wall, it feels like an apology.


	7. vii

Byleth is, at heart, a tactician.

They let themself forget that. They let themself be paralyzed by change and loss. But Dimitri is Dimitri, and the cloak around their shoulders is proof of that.

He is still avoiding them the next day; a thorough combing of Garreg Mach turns up precisely nothing, so they retreat back to their quarters and set their mind on the problem. After spending a good two hours sweeping and beating the dust out of their room; they can't be expected to think with their lungs clogged, after all.

The villager who pulled them out of the river said that it was a week until the millennium festival, not that anyone was expected to celebrate it. Inbetween the irregular sleeping, the use of Divine Pulse, and the general aura of slowly creeping hysteria, Byleth has completely lost track of the days, but it must be getting close. The promise Dimitri proposed five years ago is bright and clear as a bell in Byleth's memory, and they can't shake the feeling that there's something to it, the fact they woke up so close to the day. It would be beggaring belief to expect all of the far-flung, war-mired Blue Lions to make their way back to the monastery just to honor a promise, but Byleth allows themself to hope that one or two will return. With another helping hand it'll be easier to strong-arm Dimitri into doing something other than waste away in exile. Easier to track down the rest of the Blue Lions, bring their little family back together again.

And then?

_Edelgard must be stopped,_ comes the thought in the back of their head. But they don't know how. They're a mercenary, not a soldier, and the idea of going to war is an impossibly large thought - after all, taking responsibility for the wreckage of the monastery is one thing, taking responsibility for the wreckage of all of Faerghus quite another.

What would Sothis do? Probably say something about the petty quarreling of mortals and then give them advice that, behind the irksome bluster, boiled down to "follow their heart".

Well, their heart told them to gather up and protect the ones they cared about. Everything else would follow from that.

(They don't let themself think about the possibility that those ones won't want their help.)

Byleth spends the rest of the afternoon planning routes to the most likely places their students might be, and rehearsing their pitch to Dimitri. They're usually fine to come up with brief replies on the spot, but when it comes to making larger speeches - expressing complicated concepts or, god forbid, genuine emotion - the words tend to swim away from them unless they've thought about it beforehand. Manuela, at one point, gasped in horror at the comprehensiveness of Byleth's lesson plans.

Of course, it's a very real possibility that their words will have no effect on Dimitri whatsoever. Byleth, however, feels they must make an effort. Despite Dimitri's vast advantage in physical strength, they're pretty sure they could take him in a fair fight - they have the Sword of the Creator, and they spent a year learning all of his weaknesses, for the Goddess' sake - but dragging him unwillingly around all of Fódlan is a bit much to ask. Their best bet is to appeal to his obsessive desire for revenge - convince him that this will give him his best shot at Edelgard.

But it shouldn't be surprising, at this point, that when they do see Dimitri again, all of their words swim away anyway.

It's late in the afternoon; the sun is sliding toward the horizon, shining fitfully between thick white clouds. Byleth has been waiting for him in the cathedral, the place where he most often winds up. They're still wearing his cloak, overflowing down their slight frame and nearly dragging on the floor. They want him to be confronted with evidence of his kindness.

And for all that, he takes them by surprise. Steals across the cathedral grounds like a shadow. It's only the heavy thunk of his lance hitting ground that alerts them to his presence. They whirl, and their heart seizes in their throat.

He is drenched in blood: splattered down his armor, dripping from the tip of his lance, matted in his pale hair, looking for all the world like an avatar of death. His head is bowed, expression hidden, and without the cloak he seems exposed and forlorn.

"Why," he asks, voice ragged, low, "why won't you stop haunting me?"

Byleth's heart falls. "I'm - "

" - alive. I know you are." He cuts them off, hunches forward. "Why are you still _here?_ You were always so clever, Professor, so why can you not see that your Dimitri is _dead?_ I am a monster. A madman. You should despise me. You should be disgusted by me. But you won't - let me - go!" The last words he hisses out through clenched teeth.

This is the largest amount of contiguous sentences he has strung together in the last week. Broken ribs were easier to bear, Byleth thinks, than this.

"He's not dead," Byleth says, fingering the ruff of the cloak. "Dimitri. You're not dead."

Light slips in through the cathedral window, silvers the tips of his hair. "I am," he bites out, voice agitated, ruthless. "I killed him myself. Just like I'll kill anyone else who gets in my way. Just like I'll kill even you, Professor, if you stay here long enough. Just like I'll kill this wretched husk of a body when my task is complete. I am alive still for one reason and one reason only, and I do not care how low I have to sink, I do not care how much blood I must stain my hands with to complete it. I will live as an irredeemable, reprehensible beast and then I will die like a beast! That is the only future I have! That you insist on witnessing it, Professor, is the most abhorrent farce I have ever - " He cuts off. When he speaks again, his voice quavers. It's the closest to genuine fear Byleth has ever heard in his voice, so much so that at first they're certain he has stopped talking to them and started speaking to a spectre more horrifying than all the others. "Stop. Don't. Why - why would you cry for me, Professor?"

Oh. _Oh._

They haven't cried since Jeralt died. Haven't, in fact, cried at all except then. But Dimitri is right: there are tears streaming down their cheeks.

He raises his head at last, and the bald misery written on his face is worse than any other expression they have seen him make; worse than hatred, worse than emptiness, worse than rage.

"Don't," he says, "don't look at me that way," and it does not escape Byleth that this is the plea they have heard from him most often, and usually regarding the dead.

They take a step toward him, inexorable. He takes a step back. He is skittish, like a feral cat. Loose strands of hair, sticky with blood, are plastered to his jaw and neck.

Byleth is not skilled with words. They have long since mastered the art of manipulating their conversational partner into doing most of the talking for them. But here in the ruined cathedral, the thin evening light slanting soft and decadent upon them, no words are neeeded. Slowly, ever so slowly, they raise a hand to his face. And, miracle of miracles, he does not move away.

Gently, but with no hesitance, they cup his cheek in their palm. His skin is cool to the touch and they can feel him trembling. They know that it may very well have been five years since he has allowed another human being to touch him tenderly. His eye falls shut. His lips quiver.

"You can't save me," he whispers. "You can't save me."

White magic rises almost involuntarily in Byleth, drawn from a deep well and suffused through their fingertips. They guide it through Dimitri's body and let it set his limp aright, let it ease every last cut and bruise and scrape.

"I can't," they say, "do anything else."

Outside the sky is limned with gold. The air is still and sweet with the scent of rain. Bandits stir toward Garreg Mach, and soon there will be a fight at their doorstep. Soon the Blue Lions will sweep in from every corner of the earth in a reunion that will threaten Byleth with tears for the third time in their life.

But here and now, it is only the two of them. Here and now, Byleth wipes the smudges of blood from Dimitri's cheek with their thumb.

Here and now, the first hint of hope sings between them, quiet and fragile, and in the vaulted heart of the monastery, it feels like absolution.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOO y'all. i haven't written this much fic since 2013.
> 
> if my characterization of byleth seemed odd at any point, just know that i strongly headcanon them as autistic! <strike>i didn't consider it explicit enough to tag for this work, but i write them that way in every fic.</strike> i decided to tag it bc im like crying at yr comments;; im so happy other ppl share this hc
> 
> (also, find me on tumblr @ [aphel1on](https://aphel1on.tumblr.com) for more incoherent hollering abt dimileth)


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